


Milton Was Right

by AMarguerite



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Blatant Silliness, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-08
Updated: 2019-06-08
Packaged: 2020-04-12 14:01:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19133497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AMarguerite/pseuds/AMarguerite
Summary: Adam knows where most babies come from, but is pretty sure that doesn't apply to him. Aziraphale and Crowley show their usual levels of competence in explaining where antichrists come from.





	Milton Was Right

**Author's Note:**

> In _Paradise Lost_ , Milton has a long passage where Adam asks the angel Raphael how angels have sex. Raphael's answer is... less than enlightening, in my opinion:
> 
> ...the Angel, with a smile that glowed  
> Celestial rosy red, Love’s proper hue,  
> Answered. “Let it suffice thee that thou knowest  
> Us happy, and without love no happiness.  
> Whatever pure thou in the body enjoyest,  
> (And pure thou wert created) we enjoy  
> In eminence; and obstacle find none  
> Of membrane, joint, or limb, exclusive bars;  
> Easier than air with air, if Spirits embrace,  
> Total they mix, union of pure with pure  
> Desiring, nor restrained conveyance need,  
> As flesh to mix with flesh, or soul with soul.”
> 
> Hence this bit of silliness.

Crowley and Aziraphale had found themselves in Tadfield for what Aziraphale first declared were ineffable reasons, but actually turned out to be for  _ Adam  _ reasons. 

“My parents gave The Talk,” said Adam, when they found themselves sitting outside the American ice cream parlor that had mysteriously opened its first English location in the small village of Tadfield. “But I’ve been thinkin’ and I can’t see that all of that applies to me.”

“Er, probably not,” agreed Aziraphale, as Crowley went on a truly astonishing face journey beside him. The cup of ice cream before Aziraphale turned suddenly into a knickerbocker glory. (1) Aziraphale felt faintly guilty but then thought to himself, ‘this conversation is going to be complicated and therefore longer than any of us would really like. One has to keep up one’s energy somehow.’ “This wouldn’t be the talk about where, er, babies come from?”

Adam nodded. “So I know where  _ most _ babies come from, but where did  _ I _ come from?”

“A wicker basket,” said Crowley. “At least, that’s what you were in when I first saw you.”

“Before that?”

“The pits of hell, kid.”

“If Satan’s my biological father, though,” said Adam, with the condescending patience of any teenager who knows better than the adult-shaped beings before him, “then I’ve got to have a biological mother.”

“Not necessarily,” said Crowley, squirming in his seat. He glanced over at Aziraphale, who was primly eating his knickerbocker glory and dabbing his lips with his napkin between every bite, as if this was a perfectly ordinary conversation to have on a perfectly ordinary Saturday afternoon. Just a demon, an angel, and the anti-Christ, talking about supernatural reproduction. “I mean— there’s such a thing as— well,  _ sometimes,  _ when a demon loves itself  _ very _ much, it makes a second copy.”

Adam considered this. “Do demons not have sex?”

Crowley felt so awkward he turned into a snake.

Aziraphale primly rapped Crowly on the snout with the ice cream spoon. “Crowley. He was just asking an innocent question about his origins. There’s no need for all this drama, my dear.”

Crowley stuck his tongue out. 

Adam turned to Aziraphale. “Well? Do demons have sex?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know the answer to that one,” Aziraphale said, apologetically. “I can tell you that angels and demons are from the same stock originally and therefore aren’t, ah, equipped for mortal copulation. If one really wishes to make an effort the tools appear, but normally… no.”

“So angels don’t have sex either?” Adam asked, a little astonished. 

Aziraphale  _ blushed _ . “That is rather a personal question, but, er… oh dear. In a manner of speaking, we do. It’s only that most angels aren’t given bodies. They’re tools, really, for one’s job on earth. Back up in heaven, ah, well….” Aziraphale was now the same shade of pink as the strawberries in the glass before him. “Well, um. We didn’t  _ have  _ them, so.”

“So what did you do?”

“He was just asking an innocent question,  _ angel _ ,” Crowley said mockingly. He slithered up from his seat, which had been perfectly shaded by a striped umbrella, and into a nice sunny spot that had conveniently appeared by Aziraphale’s highball glass. 

“We—we merged energies,” stammered Aziraphale. “It’s um. It’s quite nice. No bodies or souls to get in the way.” 

Adam looked, if possible, more confused than when the conversation had begun. “But… how?”

“It’s not, er, inserting a body part into another,” Aziraphale pressed on, flamingly red. “It’s just… erm, I suppose they teach you, oh, what’s it, alchemy in schools?”

“Chemistry,” Crowley corrected, passive-aggressively icing his injured snoot in the remnants of Aziraphale’s ice cream.

“It’s… oh dear. It’s like air mixing with air. It’s really very lovely. I can’t quite explain what it looks like since if one is in the middle of it, one is a disembodied spirit and so commingled with the other being that it’s really impossible to do anything but feel  _ loved. _ And it isn’t something one does publicly, so one doesn’t… often see other angels in the act. Or, well. Not anymore.”

Adam frowned. “Not anymore?”

“Back when your, ah… biological father was the Morningstar, he and his friends had a certain  _ reputation  _ for it.”

Crowley, feeling vaguely judged, blew bubbles into Aziraphale’s melting ice cream.

“I was still eating that,” said Aziraphale, slightly put out. 

“Where’s all that go?” Adam asked, side-tracked. “The food you eat, I mean. Do angels and demons go to the loo?”

“Young man,” stammered Aziraphale, with a fussy prudishness. “That is not a polite question.”

Crowley shook, with little hsss-hsss-hssses of laughter.

“Crowley!”

“Once it’s consumed it goes into the ether,” said Crowley, “unless it goes back in the bottle because you want to sober up.”

Adam chewed on the straw of his milkshake, looking slightly disappointed with the answer. “But back to my biological father— was I made when he… combined essences with another demon then? Do demons combine essences like angels?”

“I’m sure I don’t know,” Aziraphale said, almost prissily. “I only know that when your biological father was still an angel, he had a  _ reputation  _ for it. I didn’t know anyone who was part of that crowd, but Raphael— gossip that he is— told me that Lucifer and his gang were always merging energies indiscriminately. That wasn’t really my preferred method of passing the… well, time didn’t exist yet—”

Crowley raised his wedge-shaped head from the remnants of Aziraphale’s ice cream glass. “Oh come off it, we weren’t all just merging energies together willy nilly in some kind of celestial orgy!”

“I suppose  _ you _ ought to know,” said Aziraphale, rather coolly.

Crowley flicked the end of his tail similarly to the way Aziraphale liked to passive-aggressively move anything off his seat in the Bentley. “Some of us had—and still  _ have _ —  _ standards _ .” 

Adam’s expression cleared. “All demons are angels who fell, right?”

“I prefer the term ‘sauntered vaguely downward,’” grumbled Crowley. 

“Yes,” said Aziraphale, seraphically.(2)

“So Crowley here  _ was  _ an angel?”

“I don’t see,” Crowley grumbled, “what  _ that  _ has got to do with anything.”

“Well if you could merge essences with Aziraphale I’d know—“

Both Crowley and Aziraphale began spluttering at once.

“That is a— a very private matter, young man!” Aziraphale exclaimed. 

“It’s entirely different,” argued Crowley. “Aziraphale’s an angel, and there weren’t any angels below, when you were created. Look, kid, chances are you spontaneously budded, got assigned a body, and were kicked upward in a basket to make some trouble. Be grateful yours came with fingers and toes.” He waved the end of his tail at Adam. 

“And you’re thoroughly human  _ now _ ,” said Aziraphale, in an embarrassed rush. “So all the… physical things are a consideration!”

“Hunh.” Adam made sure to finish his milkshake as irritatingly as possible, dragging out the sound. “This wasn’t helpful.”

“What do you expect?” Crowley asked. “We’re not even remotely good at our jobs.”

“Crowley,” said Aziraphale, a little hurt. “We’re… well, not competent, but we’re not… completely hopeless.”

“You did misplace me,” Adam pointed out. 

“Weeeeellll,” said Crowley. “That was mostly the nuns. Human error.”

Aziraphale made a huffy noise. “ _ Well then,  _ young man, you can just summon  _ Raphael  _ and get twenty minute explanations in  _ blank verse.  _ I hope you enjoy endless digressions about the movement of the stars because once he gets going on that—”

“No thanks,” said Adam. “I s’ppose some things are beyond human understanding.”

“Which is certainly anything that Raphael says,” muttered Aziraphale. 

  
  


  1. An item not on the menu.
  2. Which was not quite right. Aziraphale was a principality, technically. Or had been until the Apoco-lapse. But Adam didn’t tend to pay attention to the angelic hierarchy and so the world literally around him didn’t either.




End file.
